Entergy Corp. plans to unveil in the spring its preferred plan for sharing resources among the four states where it operates after a pair of subsidiaries withdraw from the current system agreement in the coming years, company officials told regulators on Wednesday.

The fate of the so-called power system agreement will be made public by May 12 in a filing with the Arkansas Public Service Commission, John Hurstell, vice president of strategic initiatives for Entergy Services, said at a meeting of the Entergy Regional State Committee.

The committee, a body of regulatory commissioners from New Orleans and the four states where Entergy operates, met Wednesday in New Orleans.

The company would be required to make filings with its other regulators in the weeks after May 12, though the filing in Arkansas would offer an early look at the potential changes proposed to the agreement.

That will soon change. Entergy Arkansas, which has paid about $250 million each year to its sister utilities under the arrangement, is planning to pull out of the so-called power system agreement in 2013, while Entergy Mississippi has said it will follow suit in 2015. And federal regulators have given those two utilities permission to withdraw.

Entergy officials are considering alternative arrangements, to be unveiled in May, including a plan that would allow participating utilities to opt-in to pool their resources without being on the hook to cover any differences for other subsidiaries to even out the costs of producing power. Regulators would have the final say on approving a plan.

But some, including New Orleans City Councilwoman Cynthia Hedge-Morrell, chair of the council's Utility Committee, have accused Entergy of making accommodations that benefit its larger subsidiaries in Arkansas and Mississippi at the expense of local ratepayers, a notion that representatives of the New Orleans-based utility giant have denied.

Richard Thompson can be reached at rthompson@timespicayune.com or 504.826.3496.